Mourinho Unhappy with Timing of the International Break

Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho is clearly not happy with the timing of the Manchester derby.

This would be his first experience of the Manchester derby and it would also pit him against Pep Guardiola, who is seen as one of his fiercest rivals in the world of management. Guardiola has come up against Mourinho on numerous occasions but the Portuguese has failed to get the better statistics. The only occasion when the Portuguese managed to comfortably overcome Guardiola was during his regime at Inter Milan. Even then, it took one of the best defensive displays in recent memory to come out successful.

As a result, all the eyes of the world will be up on the Manchester derby next weekend. Both teams will have a difficult time preparing for this encounter since a majority of their players will be away on international duty. The international weekend in the month of September is widely despised by many of the managers. This time around, though, most of the games involving international teams are extremely important World Cup 2018 qualifiers and not just meaningless friendly matches. Even then, Mourinho is unhappy with the timing of the international break and the Manchester derby. He says that this will significantly affect his team’s preparations.

“We keep eight outfield players and Sam Johnstone as the goalkeeper [for training].We are going to lose the others and we don’t know the way they train, the way they recover, the life they are going to have with their national teams.Some are coming back on the Monday before the Manchester City match but some are coming back on Friday. The day before Man City, we will still have Sergio Romero, Marcos Rojo and Antonio Valencia arriving.It will be a complicated process but we know it is like this when we have these players,” said Mourinho.